Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1297

 VENETIA. the siege of Troy, and there founded the city of Patavium. (Liv. i. 1; Virg. Aen. i. 242 ; Serv. ad loc.') This legend, so generally adopted by the Eoinans and later Greeks, seems to have been cur- rent as early as the time of Sophocles. (Strab. xiii. p. 608.) Some writers, however, omitted all men- tion of Antenor, and merely represented the tribe of the Heneti, after having lost their leader Pylaemenes in the Trojan War, as wandering through Thrace to the head of the Adriatic, where they ultimately established themselves. (Id. xii. p. 543; Seymn. Ch. 389.) Whether there be any foundation for this story or not, it is evident that it throws no hght upon the national affinities of the Italian Ve- neti. The other two tribes of the same name would seem to lead our conjectures in two different direc- tions. From the occurrence of a tribe of Veneti among the Transalpine Gauls, just as we find among that people a tribe of Cenomani and of Senones, cor- responding to the two tribes of that name on the Italian side of the Alps, it would seem a very natural inference that the Veneti also were a Gaul- ish race, who had migrated from beyond the Alps. To this must be opposed the fact that, while a distinct historical tradition of the successive migra- tions of the Gaulish tribes in the N. of Italy has been preserved and transmitted to us (Liv. v. 34, 35), no trace is recorded of a similar migration of the Veneti; but, on the contrary, that people is uni- formly distinguished from the Gauls: Livy expressly speaks of them as occupying the same tract whicii they did in his time not only before the first Gaulish migration, but before the plains of Northern Italy were occupied by the Etruscans (/&. 33); and Poly- bius emphatically, though briefly, describes them as a different people from the Gauls their neighbours, and using a different language, though resembling them much in their manners and habits (ii. 17). Strabo also speaks of them as a distinct people from the Gauls, though he tells us that one ac- count of their origin derived them from the Gaulish people of the same name that dwelt on the shores of the ocean. (Strab. iv. p. 195, v. p. 212.) But there is certainly no ground for rejecting the distinct statement of Polybius, and we may safely acquiesce in the conclusion that they were not of Celtic or Gaulish origin. On the other hand the existence of a tribe or people on the southern shores of the Baltic, who were known to the Romans (through their German neigh- bours) as Venedi or Veneti, a name evidently iden- tical with that of the Wenden or We?ids, by which the Slavonian race in general is still known to the Germans, would lead us to regard the Italian Veneti also as probably a Slavonian tribe : and this seems on the whole the most plausible hypothesis. There is nothing improbable in the circumstance that the Sla'onians may at an early period have extended their migrations as far as the head of the Adriatic, and left there a detached branch or offshoot of their main stock. The commercial intercourse of the Veneti with the shores of the Baltic, a traffic which we find already established at a very early period, may be the more readily explained if we suppose it to have been carried on by tribes of the same origin. Herodotus indeed i-epresents the Veneti as an Illyrian tribe (i. 196, v. 9) ; but it seems probable that the name of Illyrians was applied in a vague sense to ail the mountaineers that occupied the eastern coasts of the Adriatic, and some of these may in ancient times have been of Slavonian origin, though the true VENETIA. 1273 Illyrians (the ancestors of the present Albanians) were undoubtedly a distinct jieople. Of the history of the Veneti as an independent people we know almost nothing ; but what little we do learn indicates a marked difference between them and their neighbours the Gauls on one side, and the Liburnians and Illyrians on the other. They appear to have been a commercial, rather than a'warlike, people : and from the very earliest dawn of history carried on a trade in amber, which was brought over- land from the shores of the Baltic, and exchanged by them with Phoenician and Greek merchants. Hence arose the fables which ascribed the production of that substance to the land of the Veneti, and ul- timately led to the identification of the Eridanus of Northern Europe with the Padus of Northern Italy. [Eridanus.] Herodotus mentions a peculiar custom as existing among the Veneti in his day, that they sold their daughters by auction to the highest bidder, as a mode of disposing of them in marriage (i. 196). We learn also that they habitually wore black garments, a taste which may be said to be re- tained by the Venetians down to the present day, but was connected by the poets and mythographers with the fables concerning the fall of Phaeton. (Scymn. Ch. 396.) Another circumstance for which they were distinguished was the excellence of their horses, and the care they bestowed on breeding and training them, a fact which was appealed to by many as a proof of their descent from Antenor and "the horsetraining Trojans." (Strab. v. pp. 212,215.) It is clear that they were a people considerably more advanced in civilisation than either the Gauls or the Ligurians, and the account given by Livy (s. 2) of the landing of Cleonymus in the territory of Pata- vium (B.C. 302) proves that at that period Patavium at least was a powerful and well organised city. Livy indeed expressly contrasts the Veneti with the Illyrians, Liburnians, .and Istrians, " gentes ferae et magna ex parte latrociniis maritimis infames." (/6.) On this occasion we are told tiiat the citizens of Patavium were kept in continual alarm on account of their Gaulish neighbours, with wlunn they seem to have been generally on unfriendly terms. Thus at a still earlier period we are informed by Polybius that the retreat of the Senonian Gauls, who had taken the city of Rome, was causeil by an irrup- tion of the Venetians into the Gaulish territory (ii. 18). It was doubtless this state of hostility that induced them, as soon as the Roman arms began to make themselves felt in Northern Italy, to conclude an alliance with Rome against the Gauls (b.c. 215), to which they appear to have subsecjuently adhered with unshaken fidelity. (Polyb. ii. 23, 24.) Hence while we afterwards find the Romans gradually car- rying their arms bqyond the Veneti, and engaged in frequent hostilities with the Carni and Istrians on the extreme verge of Italy, no trace is found of any collision with the Venetians. Nor have we any account of the steps by which the latter passed from the condition of indejiendent allies to that of subjects of the Roman Republic. But it is jmjbablc that the process was a gra<iual one, and grew out of the mere necessity of the case, when the Romans had con- quered Istria and the land of the Carni, in which last they had established, in it. c. 181, the powerful colony of Aquileia. It is certain tiiat before the close of the Rej)id)lic the ^'encti had ceased to have any independent existence, and were comprised, like the Gaulish tribes, in the province of Gallia Cisaljiina, which was placed under the authority of Caesar, u. c.